Writing

A vehicle of travel that’s exhaust

Is exhausting to clean up.

To scrub from my floors,

My hills,

My caves.

It is a challenge no one has attempted

I listen to each word of my country,

Each act that fights to get rid of everyone I care for.

Each word that our government cleverly boasts

About how they belong to us.

How can I love

Those who creep through the dark

With their cloak of painful truths?

Their intentions were not love,

And only skitter away

So we can shoot

But we can’t harm

While all they do is shoot us down?

With their shackles,

Their laws,

Their money

All I can do is sit

and watch

and wait

as they purchase me

as I am loaded into the back of a car

as I am unloaded from the car

as I am brought into their house

For the first twelve years of my life,
There was no direct purpose in existing.
But then—
on the night of my thirteenth,
butterfly wings sprouted
from my back.

I got my own garden to tend.